tances
and surroundings were very brilliant; some of the gentlemen of the
county played both in the comedy and farces; our generous host was
profuse of all noble encouragement; and amid the general pleasure and
excitement hopes rose high. Recent experience had shown what the public
interest in this kind of amusement might place within reach of its
providers; and there came to be discussed the possibility of making
permanent such help as had been afforded to fellow writers, by means of
an endowment that should not be mere charity, but should combine indeed
something of both pension-list and college-lectureship, without the
drawbacks of either. It was not enough considered that schemes for
self-help, to be successful, require from those they are meant to
benefit, not only a general assent to their desirability, but zealous
and active co-operation. Without discussing now, however, what will have
to be stated hereafter, it suffices to say that the enterprise was set
on foot, and the "Guild of Literature and Art" originated at Knebworth.
A five-act comedy was to be written by Sir Edward Lytton, and, when a
certain sum of money had been obtained by public representations of it,
the details of the scheme were to be drawn up, and appeal made to those
whom it addressed more especially. In a very few months everything was
ready, except a farce which Dickens was to have written to follow the
comedy, and which unexpected cares of management and preparation were
held to absolve him from. There were other reasons. "I have written the
first scene," he told me (23rd March, 1851), "and it has droll points in
it, more farcical points than you commonly find in farces,[151] really
better. Yet I am constantly striving, for my reputation's sake, to get
into it a meaning that is impossible in a farce; constantly thinking of
it, therefore, against the grain; and constantly impressed with a
conviction that I could never act in it myself with that wild
abandonment which can alone carry a farce off. Wherefore I have
confessed to Bulwer Lytton and asked for absolution." There was
substituted a new farce of Lemon's, to which, however, Dickens soon
contributed so many jokes and so much Gampish and other fun of his own,
that it came to be in effect a joint piece of authorship; and Gabblewig,
which the manager took to himself, was one of those personation parts
requiring five or six changes of face, voice, and gait in the course of
it, from which, as w